Dounreay

13th October 2017

Dounreay near Thurso in Caithness is being decommissioned at a cost of £2.32bn. Safety concerns were raised in August about the handling of radioactive waste at the plant. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said safety has “deteriorated” at Dounreay and warned improvements made after a fire in 2014 had not been kept up. Environmental protection agency Sepa rated the handling of waste last year as ‘at risk’ and called the management of vaults used to store it ‘poor’. There were three serious incidents at the 60-year-old plant, where decommissioning work has been under way since the 1990s. They included workers dropping a glovebox – a device used to store leftover coolant – which caused the release of radioactive contaminants.

Clients have included Greenpeace, Nuclear Free Local Authorities, WWF Scotland and the UK Government’s Committee on Radioactive Waste Management.

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